


Far From Perfect

by commoncomitatus



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen, Memories, Scars, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-22 10:46:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11378610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: Post-Final Battle.  Regina and Zelena, living together and sharing old scars.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 'body image issues' square on my [Hurt/Comfort Bingo](http://hc-bingo.dreamwidth.org) card.  
> Warnings: references to child abuse, discussion of canonical non/dub-con.

***

It’s an accident, the first time Regina sees her sister naked.

They’ve been living together for a couple of weeks now, as close to copacetic as two ex-villains can be with a history as messy and convoluted as theirs, and Regina is frankly surprised it hasn’t happened a few dozen times already. Zelena is private, though, and she doesn’t like to do anything in front of her; the introduction of a baby and the loss of her powers might have changed that a little, but the living-together thing is a big step for them both and they’re still testing the waters. Old habits die hard, Regina knows, and her sister is still stupidly guarded when it comes to exposing herself, physically or otherwise. It’s not something Regina sees changing any time soon.

Point of fact, she suspects the only reason it happens now is because Zelena thinks the house is empty. And, well, she’s not wrong: by all rights, it should be. It’s the middle of the day, the middle of the week, the middle of everything, and Regina should be tucked away in her office at City Hall, buried under a ten-tonne stack of paperwork. She’s home, though, because it’s lunchtime, because the sight of those hideous walls is driving her to distraction, and because she’s the goddamn mayor and she does what she wants.

Zelena is upstairs, holed up in the little spare bedroom she’s claimed as her own. There’s no shortage of space in the mansion, and Regina made it clear right from the start that she’s welcome wherever she likes, but for someone as obsessed as Zelena is with taking things that don’t belong to her she’s strangely shy about accepting gifts given freely. She doesn’t want much, she insists; it’s more than enough that Regina wants her and Robin in her life, that she opened her arms and her home to them.

(Neither one of them has dared to mention their last failed attempt at doing this, the way it lasted less than five minutes. This time is definitely going more smoothly, but it’s still early, still tentative for everyone involved.)

The door is open when Regina passes. She catches a glimpse as she walks by, hears the sound of muffled cursing, and she doesn’t know what compels her to stop and watch. Maybe it’s just the rarity of the thing; Zelena resents the idea of her sister ‘checking up’ on her, and so she always hides herself away.

She’s not naked when Regina stops to watch. Fresh out of the shower, she’s wrapped in a towel, green like everything else she claims for herself, and she’s poised in front of the mirror. Oblivious to her sister, oblivious as she always is to the whole damn world, she’s trying in vain to wrestle her hair into obedience, and Regina has to stifle a laugh at the sight of her so frustrated. It’s been one the steepest learning curves since the loss of her magic; she’s got most simple things figured out by now, more or less, but taming her hair remains a bridge too far.

It’s enough of a challenge for anyone, the post-shower hair-care routine, and Zelena is still an amateur at best when it comes to taking care of herself without magic. Small wonder, really, that she can’t juggle everything all at once — her hair, the brush, the towel, the string of obscenities, it’s a lot to handle — and of course the towel is the inevitable fatality. With her hands full and her attention elsewhere, she neither notices or cares when it slips down and then off.

Regina wouldn’t notice or care either, really, except…

…except she’s never seen Zelena’s back exposed like this before, and she’s not prepared for the way it affects her, not prepared for the sight of something less than perfect.

Zelena has always been a little obsessed with appearances, her own most of all, and looking her best is a point of something more than pride. Even in her darkest, most troubled moments, she wears the look of someone stepping straight off a catwalk, sharp heels to match a sharp smile, the only armour she’s ever needed. Regina understands that it was one of the more painful lessons she was taught as a child; she’s seen the hurt behind the sneer, the way her hands shake when she says ‘put on a good face’, and she never needed to ask to know that the words come with deep emotional scars.

She just didn’t expect to find them on her body as well.

It’s nothing especially visceral: a few sharp, savage lines lashed from the skin decades ago, coloured by what look like burns. Regina has seen and inflicted far worse in her time, and she has no doubt that Zelena has done the same thing herself, but something about the sight makes her breath catch and rattle in her chest, makes her voice quake as she says, “Oh.”

Zelena jolts, then whirls around to face her. For a witch with no magic, it’s astonishing how much the rage in her eyes looks like a fireball.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she croaks.

She’s not as angry as she’s pretending to be, Regina can tell; she’s hurt and humiliated. She tries to keep that in mind when she answers, with as much calm as she can muster, “It’s my house, Zelena.”

“And this is _my_ room. You said I could have it. You said—”

“You left the door open.” _Steady,_ she reminds herself. _Don’t antagonise her._ One of them needs to stay calm, at least, and Zelena is like a caged animal even on a good day. “I was just walking past, that’s all.”

“Well, keep walking.” Her voice rises, then breaks. “Now.”

Regina doesn’t move. She understands the defensiveness, of course, the shame of being caught naked, with her flaws and her scars all on display, and it probably doesn’t help either that her hair is still a wet, tangled nightmare. There’s not a single part of her that could possibly be described as ‘looking its best’ right now, and Regina knows how much that means to her. But Zelena needs to learn too that none of those things matter any more; she needs to learn to let go of those old, old lessons and start filling her heart with new ones. They’ve come so far together in the last couple of weeks; Regina won’t let her start backpedalling now.

“Zelena,” she says, slow and careful. “It’s all right. It’s not—”

Zelena throws the hairbrush at her. “Leave!”

Acting on instinct, Regina waves a hand, stopping the missile mid-arc without a second thought. She sighs, keeping it suspended with effortless magic, then tries again. “Calm down, Zelena.”

Zelena does not calm down. She snatches the towel back up, covers herself with a brief struggle. “Regina,” she hisses, “if you don’t leave this instant, I swear I’ll…”

“You’ll do what? Throw the towel at me too?”

The fire sputters out behind Zelena’s eyes, the forced rage dying with it. Regina wishes it was acceptance dousing the flame, wishes it could be something so simple, but she knows that it’s not. It’s the other thing, the blow a physical entity as she realises — _remembers_ — her own uselessness. Because it’s true, isn’t it? There’s nothing else she can throw, no fireballs, no smoke, no conjuration; she’s empty inside, and Regina knows how hard it is, how devastating, realisation and remembrance striking now like the first time all over again.

Zelena has been without her magic for weeks now. She might not be able to style her hair exactly the way she wants it, but she can do most things by herself, and with only occasional property damage. But there’s more to a loss like that than what she can or can’t do in a given moment, and sometimes the wound reopens like it was never closed at all. It knocks the fight clean out of her, and Regina recognises from her own experience the moment her strength gives out too, the moment her knees buckle.

Regina is by her side in a flash, of course. A metaphorical one, of course, because she can’t, won’t flaunt her own talents again, but even without it’s still a mistake. Zelena hates being coddled, hates being handled with kid gloves, hates, more than anything, being treated like the invalid she still sort-of is. Regina barely manages to get a hand on her, steady and supportive, before Zelena loses what little control she might have got back. The rage ignites in her all over again and she rears back, shoving Regina away with unexpected, unnecessary violence.

“I said _leave_!”

Regina stumbles, falling back against the bedside table. The contact jars, a sharp pain in her hip, and it takes every ounce of restraint she has to stifle the instinct to retaliate with magic.

There’s no trace of remorse on Zelena’s face. She’s clutching the towel, her chest flushed and heaving, and not for the first time Regina finds herself grateful that only one of them has magic right now. As terrible an ordeal as it is, ripping out a part of herself like that, for someone with Zelena’s control issues Regina can’t help wondering if the impotence is a blessing in disguise.

She steps away from the table, massaging her bruised hip. “That was uncalled for,” she says. “And melodramatic, even by your standards. What the hell has gotten into you?”

“I told you to leave.” She’s hoarse, and breathing heavily. “You didn’t listen.”

“Zelena.” _Patience_ , she reminds herself for what feels like the hundredth time. “We share a house now. Little invasions of privacy are bound to happen. You can’t throw a tantrum every time someone happens to walk past your door.”

But even as she says it she can tell there’s more to it than just that. Even with her tendency to overreact, it’s been a while since Zelena resorted to this kind of violence for no apparent reason. She hasn’t done that since before she lost her magic and with it the only tool she had for intimidating people. She loses her temper often, even now, and she’s frustrated and impatient all the time, but it’s been months since she lashed out like this, since she raised a hand with the intent to cause harm.

She’s not looking Regina in the eye. She’s staring down at the towel, the green fabric hitched up and clinging to her curves. She’s self-conscious, she’s angry, she’s upset. For a moment, Regina thinks she might be on the brink of tears.

“Leave,” she says again. Then, in a desperate, vulnerable whisper, “ _Please_.”

“All right,” Regina says, giving up the moment with a sigh. She’s already halfway to the door, summoning a little spark of magic to mend her hip. “But we’re going to talk about this later, whether you like it or not.”

Zelena mutters another string of curses, then sighs too. “Fine,” she says grumpily. “When I’m dressed and decent.”

Regina could make a few choice remarks about her sister’s definition of ‘decent’, but she doesn’t. She lingers in the doorway, watches as Zelena turns back to the mirror. The towel dips slightly with her movement, but it doesn’t fall low enough to expose her back again. Regina isn’t sure whether to be disappointed or grateful for that; she can see the scarred skin so clearly in her mind’s eye, and she’s not sure she’s ready to see it exposed again just yet.

“I’ll see you this evening,” she says softly.

Zelena, staring numbly at her reflection, says nothing.

*

The rest of the day passes quickly and blessedly quietly.

It’s still a strange feeling, being in a position of power and actually having the trust of the people under her. Regina has never been the type of person to make a sentimental scene, but it’s been weeks now since those idiot dwarves changed the name on the door, and she still can’t look at the damn thing without tearing up a little. It’s been hard earned, that trust, on both sides, and she’s come just far enough in her journey to silently swear she will never take it for granted.

It’s a new experience, too, actually enjoying her work. She’s doing it for them now, not just for herself, and what a huge difference that makes. A mayor of the people, a mayor _for_ the people; who, other than Henry, could have ever seen that little plot twist coming?

She tries not to think too much about Zelena while she’s at work, but it’s harder than she expects and much harder than it should be. That’s another new development, another side-effect of the sisterhood stuff: she’s trying, they both are, but Zelena is unstable and unpredictable; she takes issue with the strangest, most absurd things. Regina doesn’t know how to deal with her when she gets like that, when she flies off the handle and won’t explain why, when loving her and wanting to be patient is not quite enough.

In so many ways they’re a lot alike, but in so many others they’re so different it hurts. Raising Henry has taught Regina more about patience and empathy and love than all the ripped-out hearts in all the realms; Zelena is slowly starting to learn those things too, through her daughter, but it’s hard for her in a way it never was for Regina. Her life, such as it was, has left her stunted, a full-grown child with a temper to match, and that’s something Regina hasn’t been in a long, long time.

Zelena’s temper is like a monster, like whatever lashed those marks onto her back; when it rises up, she can’t control or stop it. She can only hold on, ride it out with white knuckles, and pray she doesn’t make too much of a mess. Regina understands, she truly does, but it’s a struggle to be sympathetic when all that frustration is aimed at her.

It’s late when she heads home, breath held for an apology. Zelena has grown up enough to recognise when she oversteps the line, and she usually tries to make up for it; perhaps a little optimistically, Regina expects a sullen, sheepish ‘sorry, sis’.

What she gets — and, well, it’s sort of the same thing — is the stench of burning, a half-melted saucepan fused to the stove, and a blob of something that may or may not have once been alive.

“I made you supper,” Zelena says.

She’s dressed, thankfully, and at least mostly decent. The look on her face is appropriately sheepish, and the failed attempt at food is probably more of an apology than she’ll ever let out of her mouth. A year ago, even just few months ago, Regina might be irritated — _how is it possible to wreak more havoc trying to do good than you ever did when you were wicked?_ — but the more time she spends with her sister, the better she relates to her. Disastrous though it is, the gesture is enough.

Regina doesn’t mention the part where cleaning up Zelena’s latest culinary catastrophe takes almost more work than making the food herself would have. She just waves a hand, magics away the mess, and says, “I’m more in the mood for pie.”

It’s a generous excuse, and Zelena doesn’t call her on it. She turns away, taking a sudden fascination with the wallpaper while Regina conjures something a fraction more edible. As a rule, she tries not to use magic so carelessly in front of her, but it’s late and she’s hungry and her poor kitchen has clearly suffered enough for one night. Zelena doesn’t complain about it, but her body goes whipcord-tight and doesn’t relax until the supernatural shimmer has faded from the air. Regina wants to squeeze her hand, to remind her that she won’t feel the loss forever, but there are still boundaries and this is one.

They eat together in familial, domestic silence. Regina has no idea when this became her new normal, when coming home from work in the evening meant dinner with her sister, meant sitting down to smiles and small-talk, when ‘I will destroy your happiness’ became ‘how was your day, sis?’ and ‘I didn’t know water was flammable’. She has no idea when cleaning up Zelena’s well-intentioned messes and eating badly-conjured pie became her idea of a happy ending, but good grief, here she is.

Halfway through dessert, and just as Regina is feeling content enough to pretend the towel debacle never happened, Zelena pushes away her plate and mumbles, “I’m sorry.”

Regina blinks, not so much surprised by the apology itself as by the fact that Zelena was the one to bring the subject up. “Hm?”

“You heard me.” She takes a deep, calming breath. “I’m _sorry_. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. Or thrown things at you. Or pushed you. I shouldn’t…” Eyes downcast, she wets her lips. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that, and I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Regina says, without hesitation. “It’s all right.”

And it is, at least for the most part. Zelena still makes a lot of mistakes, some small and some rather more serious, but she’s learning now to own up to them and that’s more than Regina would have ever expected from her. She can’t always manage a full-blown apology like this — her pride is a monster too, probably too big to ever be slain for good — but she at least makes the effort to do better the next time something pushes her self-control. Regina is achingly proud of her, more and more with every quiet moment of growth.

Zelena isn’t quite done yet, though. She doesn’t look up, but the tension returns to her shoulders, and she draws her mouth into a thin, miserable line. “But I did ask you to leave.”

“You _ordered_ me to leave,” Regina corrects. She’s not trying to accuse or complain; she just wants Zelena to see the difference. It’s not always easy for her to recognise nuance, or understand why it matters. “If you’d asked, I would have left without a second thought. But you threw a tantrum before I could get a word out.”

Zelena pouts, but doesn’t argue or try to defend herself. “I panicked,” she mumbles, a sulky sort of confession.

“Well, then, I’m sorry I startled you.” Apparently Zelena isn’t the only one still growing and learning how to take responsibility. It’s not as easy as it should be, Regina finds, but it’s easier than it used to be. “I really was just walking past. I wouldn’t have stopped at all, only…”

She trails off, a little too quickly. Zelena doesn’t press her to finish. She seems to disappear inside her own head for a moment, like she’s fighting with herself. Well, maybe she is; Regina knows that moments like this, sitting down and talking things through like adults, are new and strange to her. She’s still figuring out how to tread the delicate line between speaking her mind and hiding behind insults and sarcasm, and it’s not something that comes easily to her. That’s something Regina definitely remembers from her own journey.

After a long, struggling moment, Zelena says, “No-one’s ever seen that before.” She looks away, as though afraid of what Regina will say, afraid of seeing her face cloud over. “So you’ll forgive me if I’m not exactly comfortable with all of this.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Regina insists. “Lots of people have scars.”

Zelena stares at her, then bites her lip and gets uncharacteristically quiet.

Regina opens her mouth, frowns, then closes it again. “Zelena?”

“Why are you so bloody stupid?” It comes out cracked and hitching, not at all like the insult she’s probably shooting for. “ _Any of it_ , you idiot.”

“I’m not sure I…” But even as she says it, she realises she does, and before she can stop it her jaw drops open. “Zelena, you have a daughter. I mean, you’ve clearly…”

But this is dangerous territory for them both. Regina trails off, struck unexpectedly by the pain of memory, and Zelena, clearly feeling the same way, shoves back her chair, lurches to her feet, and starts pacing. She circles the room perhaps a dozen times before she can bring herself to stop and meet Regina’s eye, and it’s hard to say for sure which one of them is more uncomfortable.

“I was Marian,” Zelena says at last. “I was his bloody _wife_.”

It’s the first time Regina has ever heard remorse in her voice when she talks about Robin, the first time she’s ever let anyone see something more than the charade of smug self-satisfaction. Regina knows that it’s there, of course — she has a sneaking suspicion it’s been there for longer than she’ll ever admit, even to herself — but she never expected to hear it like this. Robin is an open wound between them, one that Regina suspects will never completely heal, and even now she’s not sure she’s ready to talk about it.

“What’s your point?” she asks, a little tighter than she means to. “We both know what you did to him. Don’t make me regret forgiving you by bringing it up again now.”

“I didn’t bring it up,” Zelena says. “You did. And I wasn’t…” She takes her bottom lip between her teeth, clearly struggling for words. “I only meant to say, it was her body, not mine. He never saw mine.”

She doesn’t add ‘if that’s worth anything’, but Regina thinks she hears it just the same.

It takes her a moment to recover herself, to return to the present. The reminder has struck hard, a blow between the ribs, and she needs to step back and compose herself before she can remember that this conversation isn’t really about _this_. She wonders if it will ever get easier, if she’ll always feel raw and bruised when she hears his name. She spent more than half her life feeling this way about Daniel; will she ever be able to hear Robin’s name without wanting to scream at the injustice? If redemption has given her anything, she prays it will give her that.

She wills herself to look up, to look her sister in the eye, to turn away from the past and focus on the present. “And you…” She stops, clears her throat. “You really expect me to believe that’s the only time you ever…”

Zelena flushes red. “Are you quite finished judging me?”

“I wasn’t judging you,” Regina says, though it’s hard to keep her lips from quirking. “I’m just… surprised.”

True enough. She is surprised, though perhaps not in the ways Zelena might think. It’s one of the reasons, perhaps the biggest reason, why she could never hate her sister as much as she wanted to when she learned what she did to Robin. She wants to say the words, now that the subject’s on the table, to ask the question she always assumed she knew the answer to: ‘didn’t you ever order your subjects into your bed like I did?’

But she can see the answer in Zelena’s eyes, her face burning like a furnace, the shame twisted in a very different direction to Regina’s own, and for a brief, awful moment she sees how different they really are.

“It wasn’t exactly at the top of my to-do list,” Zelena mutters. “I had more important things to worry about. Like hating you.” She bites her lip again, then musters a weak chuckle. “Rather fitting, then, that you’re the one who gets to see me naked. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Ours is a complicated family,” Regina says with a sigh. Then, out of nowhere, “Was he gentle?”

For a long, awkward moment, Zelena just stares. “I beg your pardon?”

“Robin.” She doesn’t know why she’s asking, why the notion affects her like it does. Robin is gone now, and long past the point of caring whether or not he accidentally hurt the woman pretending to be his wife. Besides, even Zelena would concede that she deserved far worse than a little discomfort. “You said he was your…”

“Oh my god.” The staring turns to glaring. “You can’t be serious.”

“It was just a question.”

“And one I have no intention of answering.”

She doesn’t turn away completely, though, and Regina watches her features contort, the desire to keep her experiences to herself clashing against the realisation that maybe, just maybe, she owes her this. She owes her a hell of a lot more, really, but honesty is a start, even if it’s hard.

“Zelena,” Regina says, pushing ever so lightly.

Zelena sighs. She’s staring down at her hands, cupping them over her belly like she’s trying to hide the evidence of what grew there.

“He thought I was his wife,” she says, at long last. “Who, I can only assume, he’d been with at least once before.” She sighs, like she’s more afraid of hurting Regina, of tainting her memory of the man she loved, than she is of exposing herself. “It was… not ideal.”

The honesty is a blow. Regina feels a lash against her heart, an echo of her own time with Robin, his attentiveness, his warmth. “I see.”

“But you know him,” Zelena adds, just a touch too hastily. “Gentle’s about all he’s capable of.”

“I always appreciated it,” Regina says, and feels the ache deepen, the fondness softening the bleeding, still-raw loss.

“Of course you did.” She rolls her eyes, but it’s half-hearted. “Not that it really matters. We were both thinking about you anyway.”

Regina chokes, splutters. “We are not having this conversation.”

“Oh, no. Because _that_ would be awkward.” She sighs, then takes a deep breath. “Look, it’s all academic at this point, isn’t it? It happened. None of us can take it back, and frankly I wouldn’t even if I could.”

She has the good grace to look a little guilty about that, not that it helps. Regina bites her tongue and says, “Zelena.”

“I know.” She blows out a frustrated breath. “I wish I could tell you I’m sorry, sis, but I can’t. Not when it gave me my daughter. She’s the only good thing I ever created, the only good thing I ever did, and I won’t… I _can’t_ regret making her. So I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry.”

Though it pains her to admit, Regina understands. She did unspeakable things as the Evil Queen, but when she looks at Henry, when she thinks of the beautiful, flawed, complicated family she got from her darkest deeds, she finds that she can’t imagine having things any other way. She wants so badly to hate Zelena for what she did, but how can she when she’s done worse and reaped the same precious reward?

“Thank you,” she says, eyes closed and heart aching. “For trying, at least.”

“Mm.” Zelena’s breath is ragged and shallow. After all that red-faced flushing, she’s suddenly very pale. “Just… next time you’re ‘walking past’ and I’m bloody naked, maybe have the decency to knock?”

“I will,” Regina says, with a softness that stings. “I promise.”

*

She does knock, later that night.

It’s a test, sort of, for both of them. She wants to see if Zelena really has learned from her earlier explosion, if she’ll open herself up this time or shut down like before, and she wants to see for herself as well, wants to push these boundaries a little further. She wants to see Zelena’s back again, wants to trace the lines and patches of marred skin with her fingertips and wonder out loud what happened. She wants to look closer, to see if they’re the only scars she still wears.

Zelena is receptive when she knocks, but characteristically cautious, and when she says “Come in,” it’s with the voice of someone pushing down pain.

She’s sitting up in bed when Regina enters, wearing a shift and a sheer robe and feeding baby Robin a bottle of formula. Robin is gurgling contentedly, and the sound sends Regina back to Henry’s babyhood, to going through exactly this routine with him. It was the only way he’d sleep through the night at that age, if she made sure he was fed and satisfied before she tried to set him down. Zelena’s face is soft, her eyes bright; she looks just like Regina felt all those years ago.

“She’ll be done in a minute,” she says in a hushed whisper.

“No hurry.” Regina smiles. “I just came to say goodnight.”

“Mm.” She does look up, then, narrowing her eyes, and a little of the motherly affection drains out. “Did you really?”

Regina doesn’t say anything. She waits with old familiar patience until Robin is finished with her bedtime snack, then stretches out her arms. “I can put her to bed, if you like?”

Zelena shrugs and hands her over. It might not be their usual routine, but it’s certainly not the first time she’s let Regina play parent like this. Regina loves it; she adores holding her niece, adores the muscle memory of having a baby in her arms again, adores, in its own sad way, the soft-sharp pain of knowing that she came from her Robin, that there’s at least one piece of the man she loved that won’t ever, ever leave her.

She takes longer than she needs to, maybe longer than she should, setting the baby down, covering her little kicking feet with a blanket, humming snatches of half-forgotten lullabies to lull her into sleep. It’s a little selfish, probably, but she can’t help herself and Zelena doesn’t seem to mind. For the longest time, Regina simply assumed she would never live to see a child connected to her by blood, and while a less-than-moral coupling between her sister and her dead lover isn’t exactly the way she would have wanted it to happen, it’s hard to feel anything other than breathless love when baby Robin coos and giggles and grabs her finger in her tiny fist.

“She loves you,” Zelena says from the bed, awed and tearful.

“I hope so,” Regina says. “Because I love her too.”

By the time she’s done with the baby, Zelena is sitting up a little straighter. The look on her face is devastating, joy and sorrow at the same time, and Regina knows precisely how she feels.

“She’ll need you,” Zelena says quietly. “If she has magic, I mean. You’re the only one who can teach her how to use it.”

The urgency in her voice is surprising; apparently this has been weighing on her for a long time. Certainly since she lost her own magic, perhaps even longer than that. Regina thinks of her sister’s upbringing, how different it was from her own; she’s not sure she wants to know how heavy a burden it must have been, carrying so much power inside of her at such a young age, and with no-one to tell her it was all right.

“We’ll figure it out,” she says. “If it happens. Which it might not. But if it does, we’ll figure it out.” Zelena still looks uncertain, though, and Regina has to swallow down the urge to go to her, to invade her personal space just to give her a hug. “Robin has all the family she could ever want,” she says instead. “She’ll want for nothing. You know that.”

“Yes.” Zelena exhales shakily, then puts the thought aside. Staring down at her hands, she says, “So why are you really here?”

“I told you. Can’t I say goodnight to my sister without the third degree?”

“Of course. And if you’d ever done it before, I might actually believe you.” She’s not smiling, but she’s not looking around for things to throw either. Mostly, she just looks nervous and uncomfortable, and when she presses on it’s not really an invitation. “Look. I know why it bothered me. Why the hell did it bother you?”

Regina sighs. She wants to deny it, to say ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about’, but she respects her sister too much for that. She’s been trying for weeks to teach Zelena the rewards of honesty, of being open with the people who love her. She can’t very well set a good example if she’s not prepared to do the same herself.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “I suppose I’d just never seen it before.”

“In the flesh,” Zelena says wryly.

Regina ignores her. “I mean, I knew, of course. But it’s different, seeing it. And, well…” She shakes her head. “They’re pretty deep. I guess I just assumed you would have healed them years ago.”

Zelena blinks a few times, visible perplexed. “I’m sorry, what are we talking about?”

“The…” She gestures, more than a little uncomfortable all of a sudden. “On your back.”

“ _Oh_.”

It’s a very heavy word, realisation mixed with pain mixed with shame, the whole mess tangled up into something that doesn’t make sense on the surface. For the first time, Regina wonders if this is a separate issue, something utterly removed from Zelena’s discomfort at being seen without her clothes on. Regina naturally assumed it was the imperfections, the scars and the flaws that made her so uncomfortable, but maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe those things are their own kind of pain, something set apart and private.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out, very quickly. “It’s just… you’re so obsessed with appearances. When you got defensive about me walking in on you before, I… well, I figured it had to be about that.”

“No.” Zelena’s breathing is shallow, though, a little laboured, and she looks about as uncomfortable as Regina suddenly feels. “Why would I care what my back looks like when no-one’s ever seen…” She trails off. “Oh, bloody hell.”

Regina feels like an idiot. “I shouldn’t have asked,” she says. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, it’s fine.” She takes a breath. “I don’t particularly care.”

“Really?” Truthful or not, Regina knows she should probably just leave it there. Let Zelena say whatever she wants, let the moment die and her curiosity with it. Walk away while they still have a shred of dignity between them. Instead, she presses, “Was it your father?”

Zelena doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t seem to react at all. She sits there quietly for a while, wringing her hands in her lap; it’s a nervous habit, one Regina recognises, and it gives away more about her feelings than all the denial or affirmation in the world ever could. She doesn’t really need to say anything else, and Regina certainly won’t push her if she doesn’t. The discomfort is as obvious as Regina’s own shameful curiosity. Is it possible, she wonders, for two sisters who barely know each other at all to somehow know each other entirely too well?

After a moment or two, Zelena leans forward. She’s got a strange, intense look on her face, and there’s something uncomfortably intimate in the way she leans right in, the way she touches Regina’s face, running her thumb over her lip like they’re not sisters at all, like they’re something else. For a breathless second, Regina doesn’t understand.

Then Zelena says, “Was _that_ our mother?”, and she does.

It’s not a challenge. Zelena isn’t picking a fight or deflecting or trying to hurt Regina in turn. She’s just saying ‘if you want my pain, you’ll have to share yours first’.

Regina touches her own face, finds the scar on her lip by memory. She’s looked at it so many times in the mirror, traced the little line with her fingertips again and again and again. It’s like an old familiar friend by now; she could have erased it years ago if she wanted to, mixed a potion to heal the old torn-up tissue, but she didn’t. She calls it part of her charm now, part of her allure, but that’s not why she kept it. It wasn’t Mother’s doing, no, but Regina still thinks of her every time she touches it.

“No,” she says to Zelena, gently. “Mother did a great many things, but she would never do anything that might leave a mark.”

Zelena swallows, blanches. Already, she looks like she regrets asking. Who knew the Wicked Witch was so squeamish?

“Oh,” she says again, weakly now. “So why didn’t she heal it, then?”

Regina ponders for a moment. It’s a simple question with a simple answer, but somehow talking about it here gives her pause. Robin is just a baby, much too young to understand what the grown-ups are talking about, but still there’s a part of Regina that wants to protect her just the same, keep her safe from the ugly truths that have poisoned her family tree. Her mother and her aunt are both damaged, both broken in their own way; a child should not have to hear about that until she’s old enough to understand, old enough to look around at her own life and see just how blessed she is.

Regina looks back to her sister, finds her wide-eyed and still a little pale. She wants to hear the story, Regina can tell, maybe wants to share a little of her own in return, but she also sort of doesn’t any more. She’s hopeful, but fearful as well; she wants to know if this is a pain they share, but she doesn’t want to face the darker things it would mean if it was. Regina understands that impulse, feels a little bit of it beating inside her as well. Is this what it means to be sisters, she wonders, sharing the painful things, the things no-one else will ever understand?

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s take this somewhere a little more comfortable.”

*

Ten minutes later, curled up on the couch with a cup of hot cocoa, Zelena says, “I was perfectly comfortable in bed.”

Regina rolls her eyes at the dramatics. “Do you really want your daughter to be privy to these sorts of conversations?” she asks. “Because I’m not sure I’d be comfortable discussing our mother in front of her.”

“She’s a baby,” Zelena says. “I’ve tried to hold a grown-up conversation with her. It always ends the same way: with one or both of us leaking unmentionable bodily fluids.”

Regina laughs. She’s staggered by the fondness she feels, the way she wants to chide and hug her sister at the same time. Zelena is so often petulant seemingly for the sake of it, a sullen, scowling mess of a person who only knows how to kick up a fuss and not how to smooth one over. When they were enemies, even when they were tentative allies, Regina found it infuriating; now, sat on the couch with her, holding a plate of cookies in her lap, readying for midnight snacks and deep family bonding, she finds it almost exactly the opposite. Not endearing, not really — Zelena will never, ever be endearing — but something closer than she could have imagined. Like a home, maybe, like family.

“You’re ridiculous,” she says.

“And you’re evading.” Zelena’s eyes are lidded and heavy. She sips her cocoa, takes a second to steady her hand, then touches Regina’s face again. “You were telling me about that.”

Regina draws her fingertips away, replaces them with her own.

“I was a boisterous child,” she says, choosing her words with great care. It’s true, though perhaps something of an understatement. “Mother was rarely around, so I found ways to amuse myself.”

That changed as she grew older, of course, as she reached marrying age. Mother had no interest in raising a daughter who was still a child, only one old enough to become a queen; patience was a virtue for them both, and if Regina had known in those formative years what experience taught her later on, she might not have ached so hungrily for her mother’s companionship.

It was a simple, childish accident, the making of that scar, and she is not as ashamed of it now as she was when it happened. Lonely and wanting for human playmates, she made others in the horses and hounds that wandered the nearby areas. They made for good friends, at least for the most part, never interrupting or judging, always eager to play, and she loved them as much as she ever loved any real people.

But animals will be animals and boisterous children will be boisterous. She played too roughly one day with one of the hounds, and ended the afternoon with a gash across the face, a wound more bloody than it was painful. She howled, of course, and so did the pup, and when her mother finally noticed, when she demanded to know what had happened, Regina could only say, ‘We were playing’.

Of course, Mother was upset. Not angry, of course; she was never angry with her daughter while she was still small, was never enraged or vicious or cruel, and she never raised her voice. She was only ever _disappointed_.

“It was a lesson,” Regina says now, with her mind and her heart still decades away. “She could’ve healed it in a heartbeat if she wanted, but she didn’t. She wanted me to learn from it.” She can still hear the words echoing in her mind, and she repeats them now, partly for Zelena but also for herself. “She said that seeking companionship and comfort from others would only ever end in suffering, that I should strive for strength, not succour.” She sighs, feeling her fingertips shake just a little against her lip. “She made me wear it as a reminder, so I would think twice the next time I felt lonely.”

“And did you?” Zelena’s voice is low; she knows the answer.

“No.” Regina tries to smile, but the past is so very heavy. “I just thought twice the next time she asked how I hurt myself.”

Zelena chuckles without humour, then takes another sip of her cocoa. “That’s a better lesson,” she says. “Lying to get what you want.”

Regina rolls her eyes. “Why am I not surprised that _that’s_ what you took from that story?” It helps, though, chiding her sister instead of dwelling on the past, and when she chuckles too it’s not nearly as strained as she expects it to be. “Mother’s lessons got harder when I was older, but she’d never leave a mark herself. I think she thought that sort of thing was beneath her. And why bother when threats and restraints were so effective?”

Zelena doesn’t meet her eye for a long time. The cocoa finished, she sets the cup down, and stares at her empty hands like she’s willing them to burst into flame. Regina wonders if it’s her magic she’s missing or something softer.

“I’m sorry,” she says at last, voice barely above a whisper. “I’m sorry she did that to you, and I’m sorry that’s all she did to you.”

It’s an odd kind of compassion, and Regina frowns. “I think it was plenty.”

“But didn’t it make it harder?” Zelena asks. “She hurt you, but she didn’t really _hurt_ you. I imagine that must have muddled things. Made it more difficult, teaching yourself to hate her.”

She’s speaking from experience, Regina realises, but that doesn’t stop her from blurting out, “That’s not really what happened.”

“Oh?”

It’s harder than she thought it would be, explaining the way she feels about all this. She’s never really heard it spoken about in quite this way, like it’s something simple, and she needs a minute to collect her thoughts and her emotions, to reshape them into something tangible, words and sentences, something with a little more structure than the clashing clamour of pain and love and grief.

“I never wanted to hate her,” she says. “And I certainly never tried to. I was afraid of her, intimidated by her, maybe I resented her. But I never _hated_ her. Not until she killed Daniel. And even then…”

She trails off. It’s not enough, but it’s too much.

“Are you sure?” Zelena asks quietly.

“No.” It’s true, and that’s hard too. It’s all so long ago, so distant; how can she be sure of anything? “But I prefer to remember it that way. Whatever her failings as a mother, whatever despicable methods she used to get her way, I have to believe there was a chance things could have been different.”

Zelena studies her for a long moment, then shrugs. She looks drained and sad.

“It must be so lovely,” she says, with just a touch of her old green bitterness. “To make enough peace with your past that it doesn’t matter any more. To be able to conjure up a better version and convince yourself it’s the truth.”

“It took a very long time,” Regina says. She’s not sure that’s really what she’s doing, but she won’t deny it now. Zelena struggles with nuance even at the best of times; if she needs that kind of simplicity to make sense of this, Regina won’t take it away from her. “Decades, a dark curse, and a land without magic. But given enough time, you learn to let go of the way things were and embrace what they could have been. It keeps you from going back there too often. It keeps…” She reaches over, takes Zelena’s hand, and squeezes. “It keeps you on the right path.”

Zelena makes a small, sharp sound. Regina can feel her knuckles clenching, the skin pulled tight across the bone. She suspects they would have been ruined years ago if she hadn’t grown up with magic, broken and bruised over and over again on walls or objects or people. Zelena has so much anger inside of her; it’s a blessing and a curse that she had her magic to use as a vent. It’s more dangerous and far more destructive, but at least it leaves the body intact.

Except…

Regina releases her hand, finds the curve of her spine, arched under the sheer fabric of her robe, her shift. “Your turn,” she whispers.

Zelena pulls away, retreats to the other side of the couch. The air seems to freeze under Regina’s palm as it’s cut loose from the contact. Zelena’s skin is incredibly warm; touching her made Regina feel warm as well, flushed and almost peaceful, and it’s only when she finds her hands empty that she realises she misses it, has been missing it for a very long time.

“You know my story,” Zelena says. “I’ve never kept it a secret.”

She’s fidgeting, though, goosebumps rising up and down her arms. Regina struggles to keep from reaching out again to touch her, to comfort them both with that elusive warmth. She closes her eyes, pictures the scars on Zelena’s back, the lash lines and the burns, the way the rest of her is so flawless, so pure and so perfect.

“So it was your father,” she says. It’s not a revelation or a surprise. That’s not why she’s asking. “Why didn’t you heal it?”

Zelena chokes on her breath, turns her face away. “I tried to.”

“Ah.” Regina thinks on that, remembers her early feints at magic, how unpredictable it was, how it would only work when she was on the verge of giving up. “You couldn’t do it?”

“I couldn’t reach.” She’s stammering, like this is somehow a personal failure, like it’s not a normal part of any learning curve. “And then I could. And then I… I couldn’t control it.”

She turns around a little, lets the robe fall from her shoulders. Regina’s breath stutters in her chest; she wants to tell her to stop, to end this before the sight of those scars can undo her again, but she can’t seem to find her voice. Besides, even if she could, when has Zelena ever done what she’s told? She’s moving with purpose, slow and steady and aching, like this is more than a story, like it’s a journey, like sharing this, opening up, laying bare her body and her pain is a test for herself as much as a revelation for Regina.

“You don’t have to…”

It’s all she can say, half whispered and half-hearted, but the words die in her throat and the struggle dies with them.

Zelena pulls the shift up and over her head in a single motion, like she’s practised this moment in front of the mirror. This close, it’s easier to find the edges of the marks, the old wounds blurring against the flushed, warm skin. It’s not as dramatic as Regina has built it up inside her head; on someone like Emma or her werewolf friend, it would scarcely be worth noting. It’s just that it’s _Zelena_ , who always works so hard to look so perfect all the time. Every inch of her skin, at least every inch that Regina has been allowed to see until now, is unmarred and flawless. Seeing this part of her, flawed and flayed and stained with old, old pain, is like looking into a part of her soul, a place no-one else has ever been.

Up close, it’s easy to measure the damage. The lashes healed badly, the burns healed worse, and Regina hears the echo of her confession. ‘I couldn’t control it,’ Zelena said, and Regina realises that not all of the pain came from the same source.

Zelena’s back heaves a little, bowed by Regina’s scrutiny, but she doesn’t hide it away this time. “He said it was wicked,” she says, low and broken. “I learned the hard way that he was right.”

“You were a child,” Regina says. She doesn’t know that for sure, Zelena never specified how old she was, but it’s a safe bet; she’s learned the difference far too well. “It was an accident.”

“It _hurt_ ,” Zelena whimpers, because of course that’s all that matters to her. Why wouldn’t it be? She was a child back then, and she’s an overgrown child now too. “More than anything he ever did.”

Regina doesn’t know how to respond to that, doesn’t know what to say. She’s not sure she should say anything at all, and she feels crushingly responsible. Zelena clearly hadn’t thought about this particular pain in a very long time; she wouldn’t have had any reason to think about it at all if Regina hadn’t seen her back, if she hadn’t let her thoughts run away with her, if she hadn’t stopped to watch and wonder and ask questions. She’s responsible for the bowing of Zelena’s back, for the tremors catching in her voice, for the way she keeps her body bent out of reach.

“I’m sorry,” she says. It’s all she has, and who better than Zelena to understand how difficult those words are. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“I told you, I don’t care.” She turns her head, forces a wry smile. It’s pained, strained, drained, but it’s there and it’s true enough. “If someone had to ask, best that it be you.”

She doesn’t flinch when Regina leans in, when she touches the scars with the pads of her fingers. There’s no heat there, no chill, no shift in sensation at all. It’s just skin, no different from the rest of her. A little rougher in some places, a little smoother in others, but it doesn’t stand out to the touch like it does to the eye. It could be anything.

“I could heal it for you,” Regina offers. “If you want it gone.”

Zelena’s back tenses under her hand. She doesn’t speak for a long while, doesn’t move at all. Regina wonders if she’s paralysed, if the words have trapped her in some kind of nightmarish memory loop, if she’s reliving the moment the switch came down… or, worse, the moment she tried to heal herself and only made it worse. She imagines the burst of flame, the screams. Regina knows what burned flesh smells like, but only vicariously.

“It doesn’t need healing,” Zelena says after a moment. Her voice is steady but fragile. One wrong word, Regina can tell, and it will shatter. “It was a lifetime ago. It’s been healed for decades.”

She’s serious. She can’t connect the stains marring her back to the pain that caused them. Seeing her like that, so blithe and confused, lances through Regina’s chest like a blade, makes her feel anxious and uncomfortable in a way she can’t really explain. She knows that Zelena has a dissociated relationship with pain — perhaps with all of her emotions — but this is the first time she’s seen it this close, or at least the first time since she started to care. It’s unnerving, the distances inside her sister’s head, her heart her body.

Everything is so simple with Zelena. She can’t comprehend why Regina is making it complicated.

_It hurt, then it stopped hurting. Why are you looking at me like you expect it to start again?_

Regina can’t help herself. She leans across the couch, pulls her sister into her arms, and hugs the breath out of her.

“Don’t change,” she chokes, feverish and suddenly desperate. “Don’t ever change.”

Zelena pulls back. She’s flushed and, bright-eyed, almost naked and wholly aware of how exposed she is, how vulnerable. She’s uncomfortable but she holds herself in check for Regina’s sake.

Regina is touched, awed; she can’t fathom that this is the same woman who threw a hairbrush at her just a few short hours ago for daring to see her like this. She can’t fathom that this is the same woman who once threw her through the clock tower, who stole her heart, her lover, who stole her happiness over and over and over. She can’t fathom that _this_ is her happy ending, and she can’t fathom having it any other way.

“I won’t,” Zelena says. “I think I’ve changed enough for a lifetime.”

*


	2. Chapter 2

*

Two days later, Zelena comes to her office and says, “I want you to do the thing.”

Regina blinks. It’s the middle of the day, she’s stuck behind her desk, buried under approximately thirty tons of paperwork, and she doesn’t have the least idea what the hell her sister is talking about. In a better moment she might take a breath, count to ten and try to figure it out, but as it is she’s tired, frazzled, and completely lacking in patience.

“I’m sure you do,” she says, as tactfully as she can, then gestures at the mass of unsigned contracts and bureaucracy. “But I’m a little busy right now.”

Zelena blinks at the desk, then shrugs and carries on like she didn’t hear a word. Knowing her, she probably didn’t; Regina would never call her sister an optimist, not by any definition of the word, but sometimes she’s just as oblivious and self-obsessed as Snow White. Neither one of them ever bothers to look around before they start babbling, both completely blind to the world around them as they run off on whatever ridiculous tangent has wormed its way into their tiny brains. Between the two of them, it’s hard to say who could while away more hours talking about themselves.

“Well, I didn’t mean _now_ ,” Zelena is saying. “I mean later, when you get home. Or take a break, whichever. You said you’d do it. I want you to do it.”

Regina pinches the bridge of her nose, tries the counting-to-ten thing. “And what is ‘it’, exactly?”

Zelena stares at her for a moment, then flushes a little. It’s an endless source of amusement, how quickly and how often her skin changes its colours. Red looks better on her than green, Regina thinks, not without a measure of sympathy.

“You _know_ ,” Zelena mumbles, because of course she can’t fathom the idea that Regina hasn’t spent the last forty-eight hours thinking about her and her alone. “The _thing_. With the… oh, you know.”

She gestures vaguely, and Regina wants to indulge her, wants to at least try and be patient with her, but she is tired and busy and she definitely does not ‘know’. Nor does she have the time or the inclination just now to try and figure it out.

“For crying out loud, Zelena,” she snaps, “spit it out or go home.”

She regrets the outburst almost before it’s out, but there’s no taking it back now. Zelena flinches, mouth tightening at the corners like she’s been struck a blow, and Regina feels all the frustration and impatience just bleeding out of her at the sight.

Patience comes more easily now than it ever has before, but it’s always been a struggle for her, at least as much as it ever was for her sister. She even struggled with Henry, more often than she’d care to admit, and Zelena is more of a challenge on her best days than he ever was on his worst; even at his most contrary he knew how to charm her, how to make her want to hug him in the same moment she sent him storming upstairs to his room.

Zelena has none of Henry’s charisma, though; she might have the emotional maturity of a two-year-old, but she has the body and voice of a grown woman, and that makes it all so much harder. In a sad sort of way, Regina feels almost cheated, like maybe she’d be able to empathise a little better if she and Zelena had known each other as children, if they’d had a chance to grow up together like real sisters. She’s never seen Zelena helpless or vulnerable, never shared moments of illness or injury the way real siblings do, never got to grow up beside her, navigating together the strange changes in their bodies and their hearts and their minds. She never had any of that; she only has _this_ , a woman older than her yet still somehow less mature than her son.

She reacts like Henry now, too, which doesn’t help at all. She’s instantly defensive, so quick to anger and self-protection, and Regina can’t decide which one of them she’s more frustrated with, herself for not biting her tongue or Zelena for being so damn sensitive to everything in the first place.

“I’m sorry,” she manages after a beat or two, but it’s tight, gritted out through clenched teeth.

“It’s fine.” If the tone of her voice is anything to go by, though, it’s entirely the opposite. “You’re busy. I understand. I’ll come back later. Or not.”

Regina sighs at the histrionics. “No, stay. I should take a break anyway.”

Zelena studies her, eyes narrowed, like she’s seeking out the dishonesty she’s so sure is there. Regina waits, channelling the part of her that raised Henry, reminding herself again and again that this is new for Zelena too; she’s not used to being trusted or wanted, not used to someone going out of their way to make her feel better. She’s been hard-wired her whole life to wait for the other shoe to drop, always bracing for the moment when anticipation turns to disappointment, to heartbreak, to destruction.

It takes a long moment for the paranoia to burn itself out, and when it does all she can manage is a half-hearted “Okay.”

Regina pushes back her chair, rises carefully, tries in vain to push the mayoral crap out of her mind. It was so much easier, she thinks, when she didn’t care what happened to the people of Storybrooke, when they were all just unwitting casualties of the curse while she cackled in secret as the Evil Queen. Now, she does care, and that means feeling the weight of responsibility, the guilt when the paperwork starts piling up underneath her, when she takes a long lunch to spend time with her family instead of working herself into an early grave to get things done.

“Granny’s,” she says to Zelena, willing herself not to think too hard. “You can talk me through this ‘thing’ of yours there.” She allows herself a last long look at her mess of a desk, and sighs. “God, I need an assistant.”

Zelena’s face lights up. “If you’re that desperate…”

“ _No_.” It’s a nice thought, making the town a sort of family business, but Zelena isn’t exactly professional material. Even now, she’s rather more effective at causing problems than solving them. “Ask me again when you’ve learned to tie your shoelaces without my help.”

“Barbaric invention,” Zelena mutters, sulking.

Regina bites down on a laugh. She understands Zelena’s frustration, of course — she’s been there herself, at least in part — but good grief, she’s ridiculous sometimes.

“Henry mastered it at five years old,” she says. “I have to believe the former scourge of Oz will have it figured out at least by the time her newborn daughter learns to do it.”

Zelena glares. “I really hate you sometimes.”

“I know,” Regina says. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

*

At Granny’s, Zelena fidgets and plays with her food.

“It’s your fault, you know,” she says, like a teenager.

Regina, poring over a wilted salad and sorely wishing she’d just poofed them back to the mansion for lunch, has no doubt her sister believes that’s true. She’d just like to know what, exactly, she’s blaming her for this time.

“Anything in particular?” she says. “Or is this just to fill your weekly quota of finger-pointing and throwing blame?”

Zelena rolls her eyes. “The _thing_ ,” she says for probably the thousandth time, like she can somehow imbue the words with more meaning the more she repeats them. “Ever since you started pointing at it, it’s all I can think about. So now you have do what you said and fix it.”

“All right,” Regina says. _Patience, patience, patience._ “And ‘it’ would be…?”

Zelena twists her arm, squirming uncomfortably in her seat. She’s pointing at her back, Regina realises, and the ‘what’ and ‘why’ slam into her with all the force of a speeding truck.

“ _That_ ,” Zelena says, catching the recognition on her face; there’s a note of triumph in her voice but it’s coloured with something darker, something still a little raw. “You made me remember it, made me think about it. You made it hurt again. So now you have to do what you said you would, and bloody _fix_ it.”

Regina glances around. Granny’s isn’t the best place for this conversation, but if Zelena isn’t ashamed then she won’t be either.

“I can do that,” she says. “I’ll mix up the potion when I have a free hour, and we can set aside some time to—”

“Eh?” Zelena is clearly not familiar with this particular breed of magic. No surprises there; she’s never had much talent for things that demand patience. “Why can’t you just wave your hand and poof it gone?”

“Because the wounds are too old,” Regina says; she’s aiming for calm and steady, a teacher imparting wisdom not a big sister shaking her head, but she’s not sure it’s really working. “It’s not the usual kind of healing. It takes a little more… finesse.”

It doesn’t surprise her, not one bit, that Zelena is unfamiliar with this sort of thing, that the word ‘finesse’ washes over her like a slur in a foreign tongue. She doesn’t know too much about Zelena’s experience with her own magic, only what little she remembers from the day or so they got to share as children, the split-second in their lives that Mother stole and only gave back decades later. She knows now that as a child Zelena wanted to use her magic for good, just as she has always known that once she grew up she only ever used it for harm.

“Are you trying to mess with me?” Zelena asks.

“Not in the least,” Regina says. She occupies herself with one of the few healthy-looking lettuce leaves, chewing quietly for a moment or two, then continues. “I think we’re long past the point of ‘messing’ with each other by now, don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Zelena says; she’s looking down at her hands, a telling sign that she’s uneasy. “Sometimes I think so. Sometimes I don’t. It’s confusing.”

Regina leans across, finds one of her hands, squeezes lightly. “It is,” she agrees easily. “For me as well. But we’ll get there.”

“You, maybe. You’ve always adapted faster than me.”

“I’ve had more practice.” She thinks of Henry again, of watching him grow while every other child in Storybrooke stayed the same year after year, of wondering how she would explain it to him when he grew old enough to notice. She thinks of all the struggles she faced raising him, and the endless joy it brought her in the end. “But trust me: a couple of years from now, when Robin learns to talk, you’ll be adapting fast too.”

Zelena swallows thickly. “With your help?”

“As much as you want,” Regina says, and gives her hand another squeeze. “We’re in this together, sis. I promise.”

Zelena turns white, then green, then red. So many emotions, so many colours. “No-one’s ever…”

But she doesn’t finish. Maybe she can’t. Regina remembers the early days of her own redemption, how impossible it was to trust the heroes she’d hated for so long, to put aside the old burned-out resentments, the bred-from-birth belief that she could only ever depend on herself.

In a lot of ways, Zelena has it a easier; love is all she ever wanted. It’s been the driving force behind everything she’s ever thought or felt or done, the gaping, bleeding hole inside of her. For Regina, blessed as she was with her father’s love, with Daniel’s, perhaps even with her mother’s, twisted though it was, being loved was never the problem. Somehow, that made accepting it so much harder.

Zelena has everything she ever wanted. Accepting it isn’t the problem for her; believing it is. Regina may not be able to understand how that feels, but she can certainly help with it.

“I know,” she says, and lets the empathy be everything. “But believe me: I’m not trying to mess with you or confuse you or do you wrong. Not any more. And if you can’t believe that…” She smiles, the same sort of forced-bravado smile she used on Henry when he started questioning his strange reality. “Well. I’m sure you can believe that I would never waste my precious reagents on you.”

Zelena laughs. Loud and high, the sound makes Regina’s spine tingle. She doesn’t laugh very much any more, Zelena, and it feels like a rare gift when she does. “Touché, sis.”

How far they’ve come, Regina thinks, that she knew Zelena would laugh instead of cry, instead of glare, instead of try to hurt her, that she would take the words in jest, as they were meant. How far they’ve grown and changed and evolved as sisters, that Zelena knows not to take her too seriously in moments like this, that they know and trust (and maybe love) each other enough to recognise the difference, that they both know and understand that nothing anyone says will change the things they’ve learned to feel.

“Anything,” Regina says, and means it. “Anything you need, okay?”

Zelena looks down at her hands, _their_ hands. Her smile is shaky, but it’s hers, it’s theirs, it’s for Regina and no-one else.

“Okay,” she says, and her eyes are as warm as Regina’s heart feels.

*

She doesn’t have time to mix up a potion, but she does it anyway.

Her head is spinning with all the paperwork she hasn’t read, the contracts she hasn’t signed, the weight of a whole town sitting on her shoulders. She can’t afford this, she tells herself, though she knows it’s not true. She can’t afford to take the afternoon off, retreat into her vault, and mix up some old half-forgotten concoction for her adorable idiot of a sister. It’s the curse that comes with caring about this town and the people in it, this shameful feeling she can’t shut off.

There’s nothing on her desk that won’t survive another day. She knows that. There’s nothing critical, nothing earth-shattering or life-threatening. Storybrooke hasn’t faced a crisis since the Black Fairy, the ‘final battle’ that everyone thought was won eons ago. Emma is the town’s hero, the one who fights the battles, who slays the monsters and saves the day; Regina’s just the mayor, putting her stamp on the order to clean up when it’s all over. No-one would miss her for a day or even a week, and no-one would begrudge her a little time with her sister.

Still she feels guilty. Still she cares. It’s growth, it’s evolution and change, and for all that it makes her feel terrible, still she wouldn’t change it for the world.

Fittingly, the recipe comes from her mother’s spellbook. It’s rare that she goes back to basics like this, that she feels lost enough to open Mother’s old book and summon the secrets inside; it takes her back too far, to the days when resentment and pain and heartache were all she had, when she didn’t even realise the blessings she had in front of her. Even now, it’s a bitter pill to swallow, looking back on her father’s love, on Tinker Bell and Maleficent, her friends, on the beautiful little worlds she all but ignored. _My god,_ she thinks in those weak moments, _I was so blind_.

She goes there now, though, willingly if not quite eagerly. The Evil Queen might not be dead — she’s alive and well, living her own happily ever after with a different, darker Robin Hood — but she is gone now, and far away from Regina; they are two different people, two very different people, and it no longer hurts like it used to to look back and remember those dark old days.

What would Mother think, she wonders, if she could see her now? If she knew her old spells were being used for good, not just for one of her daughters but for both of them, for the peace none of them could find while she was alive? Regina has to believe she would be proud; those last few moments in the Underworld, the three of them united and together for the very first time, meant more than all the decades of pain and hurt that came before, the resentment and grief, all of it. Cora was at peace, and for just a moment, with her hands and her heart connecting them, so too were her daughters.

The Evil Queen and the Wicked Witch aren’t the only ones who struggled and suffered to redeem themselves. The Miller’s Daughter did as well, and Regina has to believe that she’s looking down now, smiling to see the life her daughters are shaping for themselves, the home and family she could never give herself.

Regina handles the book with care, with real tenderness for perhaps the first time in her life. She’s careful too in preparing the potion, in making things ready. It’s simple enough for someone as practised as she is, but she feels the weight of its meaning heavier now than she ever has before. It’s more than just a potion, a spell to mend Zelena’s skin of its old pain; it’s a measure of the trust between them, of their closeness, and she will not ruin it with complacency.

Zelena is already waiting when she brings it home. There are deep prints in the carpet from her heels; she’s been pacing, and she has the nervous look of someone who can’t decide whether to laugh, cry, or be sick.

“Will it hurt?” she asks, voice pitching unevenly. It’s not often that Regina is allowed to hear her quaver like that; another mark of trust, she thinks, and of faith. “Not that I care, mind you…”

Regina chuckles at the weak bravado. “It might,” she says. “I’ve never used it.”

“Oh, that’s comforting.” She smiles, lets a little of the nervousness show through. “Should I get my affairs in order before we start, just in case?”

“Now you’re just being dramatic.” Regina cuffs her lightly on the arm, then swiftly sobers. “You trust me, don’t you?”

“Not even a little,” Zelena says, but her smile brightens and her shoulders lose a little of their tension.

She pulls off her shirt without prompting; she’s not even close to naked this time, but she’s just as uneasy and uncomfortable as she was the last time. Regina watches the shivers ripple across her skin as the cold air hits. She can read the misery on her face, the flush on her chest at odds with the goosebumps, the rising chill. She’s still not happy about this, about being seen exposed and vulnerable, about being seen at all; it bothers her more than the scars, the old memories they’re going to eviscerate. Regina wishes she could understand why it upsets her so much.

“Do you want me to turn away?” she asks.

“Don’t be absurd.” She’s still incredibly tense, though, like it’s more of a struggle than she’ll ever admit to hold herself still. “You’ve seen it all before, haven’t you? Bloody waste of time, playing the modesty card now.”

“Not if you’re uncomfortable,” Regina says, with affection.

“Well, I’m not.” But that’s a lie, and they both know it. “I mean, I don’t want to be. Not like this. Not in front of you.”

Regina doesn’t know why that touches her, but it does. “Zelena.”

“I mean it.” Her chest heaves a little; she can’t seem to catch her breath. “I’ve hated you and loved you for too long now to feel like this.”

“Like what?” Regina asks.

Zelena shuts her eyes and doesn’t answer.

*

She stretches out on the couch with her back exposed.

Regina holds the potion up to the light, studies it like she imagines Mother would have, contemplative and critical, with a detachment that doesn’t come naturally to her at all. It’s a beautiful thing, the potion, glittering swirls of red and green sloshing against the glass vial; it makes her think of apples, of Zelena showing up at her doorstep with a smirk on her face the day she took her heart. Regina loathed her back then; now she looks down at her with something closer to reverence than resentment. Back then she thought, _I’ll defeat you._ Now she smiles and thinks, _I’ll heal you_.

“All right,” she says. She lets her hand rest flat across Zelena’s ribs for a beat, catching the rhythm of her breathing, then pulls back to look at her. “Are you comfortable?”

Zelena presses her face into one of the couch cushions. “I’d say I’m approximately ten thousand miles from that.”

Regina chuckles. “Let me rephrase that,” she says. “Are you ready?”

“I suppose.” But she doesn’t sound particularly honest there either. “Make it quick, will you? And, ideally, painless.”

“No promises,” Regina says, and unstoppers the vial.

The potion hisses when it touches the skin, a single careful drop to test the waters. It finds one of the lash-lines, thin and pale and keen, and Zelena sucks in her breath. Her fingers clench, finding the edge of the couch and digging in so tight Regina worries about damage. She knows better than to expect Zelena will ever admit it if she was in pain, but given her tendency to melodrama her discomfort could mean anything at all: there’s no difference in her mind between screeching agony and ‘slightly colder than anticipated’. Zelena has no shortage of overreactions in her arsenal, and she does so love to use them.

Still, Regina stops, wanting to makes sure it’s not serious. “Are you all right?” she asks.

Zelena grunts a strained affirmation that nonetheless sets Regina’s mind at ease. “Is that the best you’ve got?”

As bravado goes, it’s pretty weak. Still, Regina has learned from experience that if her sister is capable of her trademark sarcasm, she’s probably fine, and so she keeps going. The liquid falls, little jewelled drops that splash and strike the skin like raindrops, shimmering and colourful. Zelena’s back looks like a piece of abstract art, like a painting made by a three-year-old; the potion settles on the surface like water on oil, and only soaks in where the skin is scarred. The marks flicker and fade at the points of contact, but there’s more skin than there are droplets; Regina sets aside the vial and leans in to use her hands.

Zelena strangles a groan when she touches her, and so does Regina. The skin on her back feels like it’s vibrating, like there’s a swarm of bees beneath the surface in all the places the potion touches. She can’t tell whether it’s painful, can’t tell whether Zelena is even aware of it, but she certainly is; she tries to ignore it, to stay focused on the task, but when she flattens her palms to spread the liquid over the skin the sensation bursts to the surface like a roar.

She feels it, not just the hiss and sizzle of the potion and the scars, not just the fluttering discomfort of healing magic working on decades-closed wounds, but something entirely different, something that definitely hurts, not like magic but like violence; it’s a physical thing, the pain so keen and cruel that it drives out her breath, so raw and rough and—

— _real_.

Gasping, Regina breaks the contact. Her hands are wet, her fingers glinting red-green with potion, her palms slick with sweat and shaking, and for a long, desperate moment, she can’t seem to move or breathe at all.

Wide-eyed, Zelena turns her head. “What is it?” She looks frightened. “What’s wrong?”

Regina tries to steady herself, for Zelena’s sake if not for her own. “Nothing,” she says, but her voice is so high and so unlike her that she knows she’s not fooling anyone. “I just… I thought I felt something.”

“Like what?” Zelena squeaks. Her voice is shaking as hard as Regina’s hands. She can see the fear starting to escalate behind her eyes, rising dangerously close to panic. “What did you do?”

“Zelena, calm down.” She steadies her breathing, her pulse, tries to think through the haze and lead by example. “Hold still for a moment. Let me see if I can…”

Moving slowly and very carefully, she leans in to try it again, lays her hand on the skin like a priest touching a sacred relic.

It’s more than just sensation that surges to the surface this time, more than something that just feels like pain. It _is_ pain; it’s experience and memory, it’s everything all at once. It’s the moment the switch comes down, the ‘crack’ of the contact, once and then again and again. It’s her voice— no, it’s _Zelena’s_ voice, unfamiliarly high and rising higher with pain and fear. It’s the ringing in her ears, the shudders rocking her body, the pleas that never make it past her throat. It’s her arms twisted behind her some time later, the giddy, perfect thrill of magic sparking at her fingertips, the hum and the crackle, and—

She screams. The heat, the pain, the taste of blood in her mouth as she bites down to hold the noise inside; it’s so much, so potent and so painful and it seems to come from everywhere all at once. It’s impossible, unbearable, and Regina screams and screams and screams.

When it finally stops, it’s like a blown fuse, like a blackout, like all the power lines cut all at the same time. It stops in a flood, the pain and the memories dissolving like they never existed at all, and the screams in her head die in perfect sync with the ones in her throat.

Zelena is sitting up now, staring at her like she’s become a ghost, like she’s terrified for her life. “What the hell was that?”

Regina’s vision blurs. She turns her face away and whispers, “You.”

Of course Zelena doesn’t understand. She might if she’d just gone through it as well, but she didn’t. She hasn’t felt that particular pain in years, decades; Regina is the only one feeling it now, the only one experiencing it for the first time. Regina is the only one enduring and suffering and learning like this is something new, like it’s not some faded old scars that mended a lifetime ago.

“What are you talking about?” Zelena asks in a choked-off whimper. “Sis?”

“You,” Regina says again. Her throat is dry, razed almost raw, and she can’t bring herself to look Zelena in the eye. “Or your memories, anyway. When I touched your back, the potion… I…”

That’s as much as she can manage, but it’s all Zelena needs to hear. Sudden comprehension turns her face white, her eyes wide. “ _No_.”

“I’m sorry.” And she is, for both of them. For Zelena and the memories she shared without permission, and for herself for going through them. “Zelena, I—”

“No!” Her voice rises, breaks, falls. “No, you’re not allowed to do that. You’re not allowed to just waltz in and _take_ …”

She trails off, shaking her head; she looks as sick as Regina feels. With obvious effort, she struggles to her feet, clutching her bundled shirt to her chest like she’s trying to cover herself, not just her body but her memories too. If she still had her magic, Regina knows she would have teleported herself to the other side of Storybrooke by now, but she doesn’t and so she can’t. She can only stumble to the door, to the stairs, staring at Regina like she’s a new kind of monster, like she really believes she would ever do something like this on purpose.

Maybe they haven’t come as far together as Regina wanted to believe.

“Zelena,” she says, hearing her own voice break too. “Slow down. Just listen to me.”

But she might as well be talking to the wall for all the good it does.

*

It’s a long, long time before her breathing returns to normal.

She stays in the living room, sitting on the couch with her hands on her knees, giving them both some time to cool off. She can hear Zelena stomping around upstairs, as angry and sullen and immature as Henry at his most adolescent, but she doesn’t try to intervene. Let her blow off all the steam she needs, let her process this in whatever way she can, even with destruction if that’s what she thinks she needs; Regina needs to work through it as well, and the privacy means more than the property damage. She needs to think clearly now that her veins and her bones aren’t ringing with stolen pain.

She can see it more clearly now that she’s breathing by herself, the memory scorched onto her mind’s eye, burned under the skin like a kind of invasion. Zelena, young and idealistic, bright-eyed in a way the world would soon beat out of her. The lashes from her father’s switch, sharp and quick and familiar, the marks and the pain so commonplace by now that she barely even flinched. The hope rising up in her a few hours later, the eagerness, the exuberance, a gasp and the thought, seemingly from out of nowhere, _I can do this, I can heal myself._

Zelena was right, Regina knows that now: next to the flame of a miscast spell, the lashes barely hurt at all.

She knows now. She understands. It’s the one thing she wanted, the one thing they were denied. Regina can look at her sister now and say ‘I know how you felt back then’ or ‘I know what you went through’ or ‘I know what you were like’. She can look Zelena in the eye and recognise her not just as the woman she became, the reformed villain that once tried to kill her, but as the sister she could have had, a young girl with fiery curls and no fire in her heart, a daughter who never blamed her father for his violent lessons or his drunkenness, who only hated herself for the magic that made him that way, the magic that caused so much pain for everyone it touched.

Regina wanted this so badly, to look at Zelena and understand her like a sister should, but she would never have chosen to have it happen like this. It’s tainted now, the memories stolen without consent from either one of them, the pain shared unwillingly. Regina understands now, knows it and feels it like she really was there, but it’s not shared and it’s not theirs.

It’s not Zelena’s any more — ‘it healed a lifetime ago’, she said when they talked about it — but it’s not really Regina’s either. It’s something completely different, something removed and distanced from them both, and it has become a blight. It festers, a memory that’s not really a memory, and it hurts.

Stupidly, her first instinct once the shock and shakiness wear off is to find a mirror and check her reflection. She remembers the pain so vividly, felt it as though it really was her own, so much so that she’s convinced she’ll see the same scars on her body too, the stain spreading across her back. She doesn’t know why the thought horrifies her, why it leaves her paralysed, but it does, and there’s no explanation for the tide of relief when she finds her skin as smooth and familiar as it always was.

 _I’m still myself_ , she thinks, and is instantly ashamed.

She waits a long while before going upstairs, until Zelena’s room has been silent for at least an hour. The stomping and shouting wore itself out in due course, but then Robin began to wail, and Regina had no intention of talking about this while that was going on; better for everyone to wait until the little munchkin is asleep and hope she stays that way. It’s not very likely — she’s practically a prodigy when it comes to waking at the worst possible moment, so much so that Regina often wonders if Zelena has trained her for it — but she at least wants to start in relative peace and quiet.

Zelena’s door is only half-closed when she approaches. That’s a surprise; Regina expected to find it slammed shut, expected to have to beg for entrance, expected to have to mumble ‘can we talk?’ to the blank face of the door. Instead, she finds it conveniently ajar, the light still on inside. All things considered, she can’t very well take that as anything but an invitation.

She knocks anyway, though, as a point of principle.

There’s no answer. Peering into the room, she can see why: Zelena is out cold, snoring and sprawled out on the bed like… well, like Regina imagines Emma Swan must look when she sleeps; Henry must have inherited that slovenly sprawl from somewhere, after all. Just like he does, Zelena pours herself into every inch of available space, slack and spread out like there’s no danger anywhere in the world. It’s endearing, albeit not so much on Zelena as it is on Henry. Still, though, Regina finds she’s loathe to disturb her, especially to talk through something as grim as this, and she backs away without trying to enter.

The door squeaks when she tries to close it fully, though and Zelena sits bolt-upright like someone’s just set off a klaxon inside her head.

“What?” she blurts out, shaking off the dregs of sleep with the practised efficiency of a new mother. “Robin?”

Regina winces. “It’s just me,” she says, and hopes this won’t end in another tantrum. “Your door was open. I was trying to close it.”

“Oh.” Zelena blinks a couple of times, still clearly shaking off sleep. “All right, then.”

Well, it’s an improvement on hairbrush-throwing, at least. Regina relaxes a little.

“Sorry.” She means it, and she’s grateful for the excuse. It feels safer, apologising for the noise than the other matter. “I’ll oil the door tomorrow, I promise.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Zelena says with a shrug. “Since I gave up my magic, every little thing seems to wake me. If it wasn’t the door, it would’ve been the wind or…” She glances back at Robin’s crib, finds the baby still fast asleep, and immediately relaxes. “Well. No doubt she’ll do the job herself within the hour anyway. We’re not quite up to ‘sleeping through the night’ just yet.”

Regina chuckles. “I’m well aware,” she says, with gentle levity. “And I’m sure I would be even if we didn’t share a house. When that baby wants something, she’s about as subtle as… well, _you_.”

Zelena opens her mouth to counter that, then closes it again. Whether she’s conceding the point or still too sleepy to come up with an appropriate riposte, Regina doesn’t know, but she appreciates the surrender just the same. Amusing as it is, she didn’t come in here to trade barbs, and she’d sooner not make things harder by beating around the bush.

Seeming to sense that, Zelena sighs. “I suppose you want to ‘talk about it’,” she says, like the very idea is an insult. “Apparently that’s what we do now. Talk things through like heroes.”

“Like _grown-ups_ , Zelena.” Still, she has to smile, frustration mingling with affection in a heady cocktail. “This is how mature, emotionally developed human beings deal with their problems.”

Zelena makes a face, a full-grown infant from head to toe. “To hell with that bloody nonsense.”

Regina snorts, but refuses to let herself to be baited. They could carry on like this for weeks, simply fall back into old routines and habits, the banter and the exasperated eye-rolling, pretend that everything’s just like it was before. But it’s not, and there’s nothing to be gained from pretending. Better to just rip off the damn band-aid and let the healing begin.

“You know I didn’t mean for it to happen,” she says, and watches Zelena’s face fall. “I never would have done it if I’d known there was a risk. If I’d even thought…” She sighs. “You understand that, at least, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Zelena says. The look on her face says it’s true; she may not want to, but she does. “Doesn’t make it any easier, though.”

Regina sighs. “I know, and I’m sorry. Really.” She takes a breath, forces a wan smile. “But for what it’s worth, it wasn’t exactly a picnic for me either. You really did a number on yourself.”

“I was an idiot.” She says it like that’s the only reasonable explanation, like there’s no blame to be placed anywhere else. “Thinking I could use my magic for good, thinking I could use it to heal instead of harm. Preposterous, right?”

“That’s really what you got from that?” Regina asks, softly and with sorrow.

“Of course. He was right, wasn’t he? The whole bloody time, he was right about me.”

Regina thinks of Zelena’s father and wants to strangle him. She thinks of their shared mother, of the marks she never left and the ones that still linger where no-one will ever see them. She thinks of Zelena, shaking her head when they talked about it, saying ‘it must have been hard, teaching yourself to hate her’ like that’s the sort of thing anyone would want to do. Well, doesn’t that just make an awful amount of sense now?

These things are so much simpler from a distance, Regina thinks, and for the first time since Mother’s death, the complex knot of grief and pain doesn’t breed loneliness too.

“Right or wrong,” she says, “it wasn’t…”

“Please.” She’s not rolling her eyes, she’s begging with them. “It was wicked, and it made me that way too.” She laughs, bitter and burned out. “The only time it ever did any good was when I destroyed it.”

It’s the only way she can rationalise it, Regina realises, the only way she can force her life and her choices to make sense. It’s the only way she can wash it away, the pain that came with having magic when she was young and the pain that came with losing it when she was older, the choices she made then and the ones she’s made since. It’s the only way she pull all those threads together, untangle them into something useable, and though Regina desperately wants to say ‘that’s not true’ or ‘it’s not so simple’ she won’t take the convenient lie away from her. It took half her life, half of both their lives, but she’s earned it.

“It’s gone now,” Regina says instead. “All of it.”

Zelena nods. She looks exhausted, but somehow Regina doesn’t think it’s weariness making her rub her eyes.

“I don’t care about the pain,” she says. “You can have it, for all I care. I just hate that you got to see me screw it up like that.”

Regina scoffs. “I doubt that’s true,” she says. “You’ve never cared what I think.”

“Well, maybe I do now. Maybe I’ve changed. Maybe I’m…”

She trails off, folding her hands in her lap and blinking down at them like she’s trying not to cry. Regina crosses the room, sits down on the bed, and kisses her cheek.

“You _are_ an idiot,” she says. “After everything we’ve been through, do you really think I care if you screw up?”

“Maybe,” Zelena says quietly. “Lately it’s all I seem to do.”

That’s true enough, though it’s absurd that she’d think anyone would hold it against her. Adapting to life without magic has been a challenge for them both; Regina has lost count of how many kitchen utensils she’s had to replace, to say nothing of carpets, paintings, wallpaper and whatever else happens to be in Zelena’s path on a bad day. But the frustration that tugs at her now is very different to the hate she felt when they were enemies, even the guarded resentment when they were tentative allies, when Zelena was arrogant and smug and self-obsessed and would never, ever admit she was wrong.

She still struggles with that, even on her best days. But it’s easier, Regina thinks, to blame the lack of magic when she does something stupid, to pretend it’s unfamiliarity and not simple ineptitude. It’s always easier to admit one’s failings with a ready-made scapegoat, and Regina will happily indulge this one because for the first time in her life Zelena is actually _trying_. She still screws up, still leaves a mess in every room she passes through, but she cares now if other people get hurt in the process. She cares what Regina thinks. It’s a huge step for her, and for the two of them as a unit, a family. It’s a sort-of step for Regina as well, to realise that she cares too, that she has grown to adore this woman she once despised.

“I don’t,” she says, with honesty and love. “I don’t care if you screw up now, and I sure as hell don’t care that you screwed up a few decades and a dozen curses ago. My god, Zelena. You were a child and you were in pain, and you didn’t know the first thing about how to use your magic. How could you possibly think…”

But she stops, because of course she knows the answer now; she remembers and she doesn’t need or want to hear it said. She remembers being there, remembers being _her_ , and she knows everything.

She remembers the pain, of course, the humiliation and the fear, remembers being so small, so impossibly and tragically small, remembers wanting so desperately to be bigger, to be better, to be _more_. More than that, though, more than anything else at all, she remembers what happened later; she remembers the smell of burning flesh, remembers biting down on her bedsheets to silence the screams because she had to keep them inside, because he couldn’t know, couldn’t see, couldn’t find out.

 _He was right,_ she remembers thinking. It’s the only thing she could think, the only truth she knew. _He was right, I was wrong, I am wrong, I’m wicked and I’m wrong, wrong, wrong._

She can see on Zelena’s face that she knows, that she sees and remembers it all too, and just for a moment, wordless and delicate, they are both so very young.

“I don’t care about the pain,” Zelena says again. She turns, buries her face in Regina’s neck. Regina can feel her trying to breathe. “I never cared about the bloody pain.”

“I know,” Regina says, and she does, now, at last. “I understand.”

*

In the morning Zelena stumbles down to the kitchen, pours herself a cup of coffee and says, “I did it for her, you know.”

She’s dishevelled, groggy, only about a quarter-awake, and for once Regina doesn’t have the heart to say ‘what time do you call this?’. She watches, smiling to herself, and waits for the defining moment, the one where Zelena either spills coffee over herself and spends the next half-hour whining about it or actually gets it into her mouth and allows the breakfast routine to continue without interruption.

Today, blessedly, it’s the latter.

Regina nods her approval, keeps the relief tucked safely below the surface, and says, as coolly as she can, “For Robin, you mean?”

“Mm.” Zelena plonks herself down at the table. She’s haggard and dishevelled, and hasn’t even tried to wrestle her hair into obedience. “I want cereal,” she says.

Regina chuckles at the childishness, then shakes her head, refusing to rise to the bait. “You know where we keep it. Feel free to make yourself some.”

“You stole my memories,” Zelena pouts. “You owe me cereal.”

Well, that is absolutely not the way things work in Regina’s house, but she’s found that it’s almost impossible to argue with her sister when she’s in this mood. Mornings do not look good on her without magic, and it’s entirely too easy for Regina to let her fondness overpower her reason.

(Besides, she’s come to discover that it’s just easier to make breakfast herself than clean up after Zelena’s latest attempt at self-sufficiency. Sometimes, she’s worse than Henry ever was.)

She waits until Zelena is at least partly fed and caffeinated before touching on the issue again. “So,” she says, gentle but genuinely curious. “Robin?”

“You heard me.” Zelena sighs. “I didn’t want her to ask about it.”

“You didn’t want to have to explain that you did it to yourself?”

“Yes. No.” She ducks her head, pretends to study the cereal bowl. Her neck flushes hot; Regina wants to cover the skin with her hand, wants to soothe the heat with her thumb, wants to help, but she doesn’t move. “I didn’t want to have to tell her that my _magic_ did it.”

“I see,” Regina says, and she definitely, definitely does.

“If she does have it…” Zelena says. “If she does turn out…”

“…like us,” Regina offers, breath catching in her chest.

Zelena nods, but can’t bring herself to say it. “I don’t want her to experience it like I did. I don’t want her thinking that it’s wicked, that _she’s_ wicked for having it. I won’t let her grow up afraid of herself. I won’t.”

Regina thinks back to her own childhood, to growing up under Cora. She was so secretive about her magic at first, distant and careful, not like a protector, not like a mother shielding her daughter from something dangerous but like a dragon hoarding its stash. Magic was a secret, something to be coveted and desired, at least in the too-short years before Regina grew up.

But then she did. Then she became a young woman, and everything changed. Suddenly Mother’s magic wasn’t a secret any more; suddenly it was a tool, used freely to discipline and terrify.

Regina learned to fear her mother’s magic when she was old enough to understand what it was, but it wasn’t until some time later, when she was angry and bitter, when the hate was ripe and raw, that she learned it could be hers as well. ‘I won’t be like her,’ she told herself. ‘I won’t use it the way she does, I won’t do the things she does.’ All in vain, of course — Rumpelstiltskin made sure of that, master manipulator that he was — but at least the choice was hers to make. To pick it up, to wield it, to shape it into what she wanted. She reached out and took hold of the thing that frightened her, and she claimed it for herself.

It wasn’t like that for Zelena. Regina is only really starting to understand now, lit up with her ill-gotten memories, the big and small differences between them. Zelena didn’t choose her magic, didn’t use it or take it or claim it; she _was_ her magic. And whether she liked it or not, her magic was her.

Neither one of them had it easy. It’s taken them both far too long to truly see that, to recognise the imperfect reflections of themselves in each other’s eyes, to see the family resemblance through all their different and similar sorrows. They both have their old scars and shame, their secret and not-so-secret fears. But here they are, together in spite of it all, and between the two of them maybe there’s just enough experience to make sure little Robin has something better.

“Robin is loved,” Regina says. “That’s more than you ever had. And she will be protected. That’s more than I did.”

Zelena is staring into her cereal bowl, clenching her jaw. She breathes slowly for a little while, like she’s bracing against a coming storm, then swallows hard and looks Regina in the eye.

“I would have protected you,” she whispers. “If we’d grown up together. From our mother, from the whole bloody world. From everyone and everything. I would have protected you.”

Touched and heartbroken, Regina finds a smile. “And I would have loved you.”

*

It helps. Only a little, but for the two of them that’s a hell of a lot.

Regina takes care of Robin the next time Zelena takes a shower, and when she re-emerges in nothing but a towel and blanches at the thought of being seen, it makes a lot more sense than it did the first time.

It’s not quite understanding, the heat the floods Regina’s chest now. At least, it’s not the kind of understanding that feels complete or whole or true. It is something, though, perhaps a kind of empathy, a feeling that runs deeper than compassion, that means something more. It’s the little piece of her that remembers being small, that remembers the scream of burned flesh and the taste of blood in her mouth, that remembers thinking, above and before anything else, _this is all my fault and I deserve it_.

Zelena doesn’t say anything. She stands there, clinging to the towel like it’s a lifeline, like it’s the only thing she knows for sure will keep her safe. She’s staring at Regina and Robin, her sister and her daughter, the two most important people in her whole world, like she doesn’t know which one of them to embrace first, which one of them holds a bigger piece of her heart.

Regina, stretched out on the bed with the baby on her chest, doesn’t sit up. She smiles and says, “Took your time in there, sis.”

The ice, what little there was, breaks. Zelena glares, a playful sisterly sort of look, then shakes her head. “It’s the only luxury I have,” she says.

“Speaking as the person who put her breakfast on hold to make yours,” Regina says, “that’s patently not true.”

“Well, it’s sort of true,” Zelena grumbles. She tugs on the towel as it slips, and Regina recognises the shadow that falls over her face, the discomfort chasing away the levity as she gestures at the door. “Do you mind?”

Regina sits, then stands, taking great care not to jostle the baby. Robin is just starting to drift off into a light sleep, murmuring and humming as babies do, and so she sets her down gently in her crib.

“Is this still a problem?” she asks, without judgement. “The nudity thing?”

“Of course not.” Her throat convulses. She looks nauseous for a second, then quickly steadies herself. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

A couple of days ago, Regina would not have understood. She’d be frustrated, annoyed by her sister’s inability to sit down and talk about her feelings like a rational, reasonable human being. _We share a house, we share a life, you’re sharing your child with me,_ she would think. _Is it really such a goddamn nightmare, the thought of letting me see your body too?_ She would try to understand, try to pierce the look on Zelena’s face, the different colours mottling her skin, and she would come up empty.

None of those things happen today. Today she remembers; today she knows. Today, when she looks at Zelena’s face, blotchy because she’s not sure whether to blush or blanch, she understands exactly why.

“You’re not like that any more,” she says. “You’ve changed, remember?”

Zelena laughs, the weak, shaky laugh of someone who is trying desperately not to cry. “Sometimes,” she confesses, “when I look in the mirror, all I can see is green.”

Regina closes the space between them, finds the rough edges of the towel with her fingertips, but doesn’t pull it away. “That’s not what I see,” she says. “I see a lot of colours, but not that one.”

“Maybe you’re not looking hard enough,” Zelena says.

Regina turns her around, repositions their bodies so they’re both facing the mirror. “Maybe you’re looking too hard,” she says. “Let me tell you what I see.”

“I know what you see.” Zelena doesn’t meet her eye, but she doesn’t flinch away either; it’s progress, the glacial kind that comes so naturally to their family. Her breath is ragged and shallow; Regina can feel it in the space between the towel and her skin. “You see someone who was damaged, a poor lost soul who was made wicked by circumstance, or some such heroic nonsense. You see someone who was once a little girl, a child who was afraid to show her pain in case her father saw and made it worse.” She squints at her reflection, like she’s trying desperately to see those things too, then sighs and shakes her head. “But that’s not what I was, sis, and it’s not what I am. I am what I’ve always been: _wicked_.”

“No,” Regina says. “I saw your memories. I felt them.”

“But I _lived_ them. And I was never…” She shakes her head, then her whole body shakes. Regina leans in a little closer, steadies them both. Their reflections tremble, two sad faces that look nothing alike. “I wish I could see the me that you see.”

“And I wish…” Regina exhales. They’re breathing in rhythm now, neither one of them doing it on purpose. “I spent a long time wishing I could be the me that you saw from Oz all those years ago. The me that you envied. The me that had it all, the me that became queen and relished it. The me that was everything our mother wanted me to be. But that wasn’t who I really was either.”

Zelena shudders against her, hiding something like a sob. _I know,_ she doesn’t say. _I understand now too._

“Do you think she would be proud of us now?” she asks instead. “All that bloody change. Do you think she’d be proud of where it got us?”

Regina touches her with care, with reverence, with the experience of someone who has been hurt just as deeply, beneath the skin if not on the surface. She can feel the contours of Zelena’s body through the towel, the smooth skin on her back where the potion took the scars away, the pain still burning underneath, too stubborn for any spell to erase. Mother took so much from both of them, but she gave it all back in the end and made things right as best she could.

If she can do that, Regina thinks, surely her daughters can too. They won’t make her mistakes, or their own, ever again. They’ll learn from them together, and they will be better.

“Yes,” she says, and holds her sister close. “I know she is.”

***


End file.
